1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to toy weapons, and more particularly to a toy gun adapted to shoot out innocuous soft pellets formed of flexible foam plastic material impregnated with water, so that an individual struck by the pellet is made wet thereby.
2. Status of Prior Art
Toy weapons which simulate actual weapons have always been popular with children, for children seek to emulate the activity of adults. However, those weapons which act to shoot out a missile capable of inflicting even slight injury on an individual struck by the missile are not acceptable; for in toys, safety is a primary consideration.
A toy water gun is innocuous and therefore acceptable, for the worst it can do is to wet an individual struck by a stream of water emitted from the gun. One such water gun is disclosed in the Johnson U.S. Pat. No. 4,591,071, in which the gun includes a pump to compress air for applying pressure to water contained in the gun, the water being supplied thereto by a bottle or reservoir attached to the gun. In this arrangement, a trigger-actuated flow control valve acts to control the flow of pressurized water through a nozzle in the barrel of the gun.
From a child's standpoint, a water gun, however elaborate its mechanism, does not simulate the action of a real weapon, for the toy does not shoot out a bullet or missile of some sort, but only a stream of water. Even if the water gun emits pulses of water rather than a continuous stream, this is not equivalent to shooting out a missile. On the other hand, a child who operates a water gun enjoys the fact that if he succeeds in striking a child who is also armed with a water gun and assumes the role of an enemy player, he has thereby humiliated his enemy and is therefore victorious.
A more realistic toy weapon is one that shoots out soft balls of flexible, foam plastic material. While a ball of this type is innocuous, it is functionally equivalent, as it were, to a cannonball or other missile which physically strikes another player and in doing so, scores a hit. A toy weapon of this type is disclosed in the Moorman U.S. Pat. No. 4,892,081, in which a soft ball is squeezed into a cavity at the front end of a gun barrel and is launched by compressed air produced by advancing a plunger toward the ball until the resultant air pressure is such as to overcome the hold of the cavity on the ball squeezed therein.
But in a toy weapon of the Moorman type, the missile shot out of the gun is a dry, soft ball; hence a child struck by this ball is not humiliated by this experience, for the ball simply bounces off the child. The term humiliate is used in the sense of a loss of dignity, and the reason children find water gun games exciting, even though they do not shoot out missiles, is that each player seeks, as best he can, to avoid being made wet and ashamed.
Hence those weapons which act to shoot out dry balls or other dry missiles are more realistic than those which merely wet a target; whereas those which wet a target afford a degree of play satisfaction that is lacking in toy weapons which shoot out dry missiles.